Autumn is capricious, flirtatious and unpredictable. Sometimes she disguises herself as a protracted finish to a long, hot summer. Sometimes she appears as a premature and unwelcome beginning of a long, cold winter. Sometimes she is a season unto herself, a celebration of the harvest, a culmination and a fruition of all of the labors and toils of the preceding seasons. A time when it is appropriate and proper for people to reflect upon their fortunes, good and ill, and a time to gain perspective on where they are in relation to both where they’ve been and where they would go. Autumn is often a time when baseball fans hope against all reason that, just this once, the home town team will make it to the top, or even anywhere near the top, and stay there. Autumn marks the end of summer vacations and political campaigns. Autumn is the time when the retail industry gears up for its busiest season. When students of all ages and degrees of preparedness return to school. When the television networks trot out their new, yet curiously familiar and insipid, programming. When pumpkins are carved and turkeys are roasted. Autumn is at once a beginning and an end. A time for reconciliation and anticipation. A season for planning new battles and binding old wounds. For making new friends and forgiving old enemies. Like her sister, Springtime, Autumn is a bridge between the familiar and the unknown, between plenty and scarcity, between the folly of youth and the wisdom of age. Autumn in New England is distinguished from Autumn elsewhere by her breathtaking, awe-inspiring displays of foliage. People come from literally all over the world to watch the leaves change color. Pilgrim witnesses receive the falling leaves like so many splendid, variegated thank-you notes for a year well spent, like so much divinely-strewn confetti at a miraculous parade held just for them. Autumn in New England can touch, inflame, ignite and inspire that which is both childlike and divine in the human soul as few other times in few other places can.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 01:53:02 +0000
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